Susan Mary O'Rourke is an Australian solicitor and barrister whose legal career has centred on Sydney's large commercial law firms. She is known for energy and resources work, including complex cross-border transactions, and became a partner at Clayton Utz and Mallesons Stephen Jaques.
Background
Susan Mary O'Rourke was born on April 7, 1955, in Queanbeyan, New South Wales, Australia. Queanbeyan is a city in south-eastern New South Wales, close to Canberra, the national capital that had been designated as the seat of the federal government in the early twentieth century. She was the daughter of Edward Patrick and Jean Florence O'R.
Her later education and first legal positions brought her to Canberra and then to Sydney, where most of her subsequent career was based.
Education
O'Rourke studied at the Australian National University in Canberra, where she completed a Bachelor of Economics in 1975 and a Bachelor of Laws with honors in 1978. The university was founded by an Act of the federal parliament in 1946 as a postgraduate institution, and it admitted undergraduates for the first time in 1960 after merging with Canberra University College. Her undergraduate studies therefore took place at a university that was then developing its undergraduate programs alongside its research role.
In addition to her degrees, her record lists postgraduate study at the Salzburg Seminar in 1986. The Salzburg Seminar is an international academic program held in Salzburg, Austria, that brings together participants from many countries for seminars on public and international affairs.
O'Rourke began her legal career as a solicitor with Macphillamy Cummins & Gibson in Canberra from 1978 to 1980. She then worked as a solicitor with Allen Allen & Hemsley in Sydney from 1981 to 1983. That firm traced its origins to a Sydney practice founded in the early nineteenth century, and the lawyer Alfred Hemsley joined it in 1894, giving it the name Allen Allen and Hemsley. It later merged in 2001 with Arthur Robinson & Hedderwicks to form Allens Arthur Robinson.
From 1984 to 1989 she was a partner at Clayton Utz in Sydney. The firm traces its Sydney origins to 1833, took the name Clayton & Utz in 1920, and merged with Pritchards in 1983, when it also opened its first Melbourne office. Her partnership there coincided with the firm's expansion into a national practice.
In 1989 she became a partner at Mallesons Stephen Jaques in Sydney. The firm had been formed in 1987 when Stephen Jaques Stone James merged with the Melbourne firm Mallesons. The merger created what the firm described as the first truly national, integrated law firm in Australia, and Mallesons had earlier traced its roots to Alfred Brooks Malleson, who began practising in Melbourne in 1856.
Later, a Lawyers Weekly report described her as a former Mallesons Stephen Jaques and Clayton Utz energy projects specialist who had been hired as a partner in the Sydney office of Gadens. The report stated that her work focused on large and complex cross-border transactions, particularly oil and gas, petrochemicals, pipelines and liquefied natural gas projects, and that her clients included Japanese, United States and Middle Eastern investors.
Membership
O'Rourke is a member of the Australian Mining and Petroleum Law Association, a professional body for lawyers and others working in Australian mining and petroleum law. Her membership reflects the energy and resources focus of her legal practice.
She is also a member of the Australia-Japan Business Cooperative Committee, which relates to business cooperation between Australia and Japan. This connection corresponds with her documented Japanese transactional work and her interest in Japanese arts.
Australian Mining and Petroleum Law Association
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Australia
Australia-Japan Business Cooperative Committee
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Australia
Interests
Collecting Japanese cloisonné and other Asian arts, sailing, theater, and literature.
Connections
O'Rourke married Udo Lotz on February 10, 1979. The couple have two children, Rupert Edward Thomas and Charles Oliver Morgan.
